Unveiling the Big Business of MEV on Solana
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Unveiling the Big Business of MEV on Solana
MEV is big business, especially on Solana where MEV is particularly intense and highly profitable.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Maggie
Over the past year, the Memecoin frenzy has turned Solana into a gold rush ground for traders. Countless people have chased volatile Meme coins, trying to gain an edge with Trading Bots. But few realize—the truly risk-free, highly profitable business isn't found in fluctuating K-lines, but hidden deep within the blockchain’s dark forest. This is MEV (Maximal Extractable Value).
Compared to the visible bot profits, MEV earnings are often concealed within block construction and transaction ordering mechanisms, controlled by the invisible hands—those who hold on-chain power and infrastructure. Most people remain unaware because this system has high operational barriers, extreme information asymmetry, and is dominated by a highly concentrated group.
While you use bots to frontrun internal trades or avoid being sandwiched, MEV searchers operate behind the scenes, manipulating transaction order to precisely capture arbitrage opportunities. When retail traders compete on speed and strategy, large institutions with staking advantages and node privileges already sit atop the profit pyramid thanks to structural dominance.
On Solana, MEV isn’t just a trading opportunity—it’s a form of infrastructure-level power—controlled by a select few, forming a capital game characterized by high barriers, high monopolization, and massive profitability. Today, we’ll uncover the big business of MEV on Solana.
1. First, what is MEV?
MEV stands for Miner Extractable Value, referring to the extra profits miners or validators can earn by including, excluding, or reordering transactions when building blocks. Due to the Memecoin boom and active DeFi ecosystem, the scale of MEV is enormous.
From a business perspective, MEV typically includes: liquidations, arbitrage, and sandwich attacks.
Liquidation: Clearing undercollateralized loan positions to claim rewards.
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When borrowers fail to maintain the required collateral ratio in lending protocols, their positions become eligible for liquidation. MEV searchers monitor the blockchain for such undercollateralized positions and execute liquidations by repaying part or all of the debt, receiving a portion of the collateral as a reward.
Arbitrage: Buying and selling across different DEXs simultaneously to exploit price differences.
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The simplest form of arbitrage occurs when two DEXs show different prices for the same trading pair—arbitrageurs profit via a single transaction that captures the spread.
Sandwich attack: Buying before a target transaction and selling afterward for profit.
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A sandwich attack is an arbitrage strategy in DeFi markets where attackers execute three atomic bundled transactions to generate profit: first, a loss-making frontrunning trade pushes up the asset price to the maximum allowed slippage of the victim; then, the victim's trade executes at this inflated price, further pushing the price up; finally, the attacker sells the asset at the artificially high price through a backrunning trade, offsetting initial costs and securing net profit.
From a behavioral standpoint, MEV strategies are generally divided into front-running and back-running:
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Front-running: This refers to MEV searchers identifying another trader’s buy or sell order in the mempool and placing the same order ahead of it, profiting from the price impact caused by the subsequent trade.
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Back-running: The counterpart to front-running, this MEV strategy exploits temporary price imbalances created by another transaction—often due to inefficient routing. Once a user’s trade is executed, reverse-trade searchers rebalance prices across pools by trading the same asset, locking in profits.
Liquidations are always back-run, most arbitrage is back-run, and sandwich attacks involve both front-run and back-run. For specific MEV case studies, refer to the Helius report, which offers detailed explanations and examples.
2. How big is the MEV business?
According to some unverified statistics, trading bots earned $1.1 billion last year, pump campaigns made $500 million, MEV generated $1.5 billion, AMMs earned $1 billion, celebrity-linked parties earned $500 million, and nearly $5 billion was taken off-chain.
On the Solana network, rising activity and the 2024 Memecoin surge have driven MEV revenue sharply upward. According to the Helius report, Jito’s arbitrage detection algorithm analyzed all Solana transactions—including those outside Jito bundles—and identified 90,445,905 successful arbitrage transactions over the past year. The average profit per arbitrage was $1.58, with the highest single arbitrage earning $3.7 million. These arbitrages generated $142.8 million in profit, of which $126.7 million (88.7%) was denominated in SOL.
MEV is a massive business!
3. MEV on Solana is particularly severe—The MEV King: Jito
MEV on Solana is more intense and centralized than on Ethereum, due to fundamental differences in their underlying architectures.
Solana: High performance → Sacrifices decentralization → Higher centralization → Extreme concentration of power
Solana is known for its high performance, with a block time of just 400 milliseconds (compared to Ethereum’s 12 seconds), but this design sacrifices some degree of decentralization, leading to highly centralized control.
Solana lacks a traditional mempool; other nodes must connect directly to the current block-producing validator to obtain block data and submit transactions. This gives block-producing validators immense power, with little mechanism for checks and balances, resulting in severe MEV issues on Solana, marked by high monopoly and profitability.
In contrast, Ethereum’s MEV market is more competitive. Intense rivalry among MEV searchers and block builders drives down overall MEV profits.
Jito dominates MEV on Solana.
In August 2022, Jito launched the Jito-Solana client. For the first nine months, adoption remained below 10% due to low network activity, and MEV rewards were limited. Starting late 2023, adoption accelerated rapidly, reaching 50% by January 2024. By the end of 2024, over 94% of Solana validators (by stake-weighted share) were running the Jito-Solana client, establishing absolute dominance.
How does Jito work?
The key difference between the Jito-Solana client and the official client is that it natively supports MEV extraction mechanisms, primarily through its Bundles service. Validators running this client effectively join the Jito alliance. The alliance provides a priority execution channel: traders pay tips to submit bundles, gaining transaction ordering advantages. As a result, the Jito client significantly boosts validator revenue compared to the official client.
Jito Bundles
Jito Bundles allow traders to prioritize and execute critical transactions by bundling them and paying tips. This is useful not only for MEV opportunities but also for accelerating trades, batch processing, and avoiding sandwich attacks. The core process is:
1. Transaction assembly: Traders identify arbitrage opportunities and quickly construct transactions.
2. Bundle submission: Transactions are packaged into a bundle and sent to Jito nodes with a tip to boost priority. These bundles are relayed to the current block leader.
3. Priority execution: If a Jito validator becomes the slot leader, it prioritizes these transactions in the block and executes them early. Profits are distributed between the validator and the Jito protocol.
Jito’s Staking Mechanism
As mentioned earlier, the more SOL staked on a Jito node, the higher the Tips and MEV income. Therefore, Jito nodes need to attract more SOL staking. To achieve this, the Jito protocol allows users to stake SOL and share a portion of node rewards and MEV profits.
To further expand its staking base, Jito launched a staking protocol enabling ordinary users to delegate SOL to Jito nodes and receive proportional shares of block rewards and MEV income. Stakers earn returns, nodes increase block production probability, and traders gain priority execution—forming a complete MEV profit loop.
Three Key Characteristics of MEV: Information Advantage, Monopoly Effect, Capital Barriers
MEV is an information war—winner takes all
Competing for MEV opportunities on Solana comes down to millisecond-level speed and sensitivity to on-chain information. Whoever detects arbitrage fastest and submits transactions to the same or next slot wins the profit. This depends on two factors:
* Fast information synchronization, usually requiring connection to large Jito node RPC services;
* Rapid transaction submission, preferably through the Jito Bundles channel with sufficient tips.
Jito’s bundle service is monopolistic.
The key to MEV is “who is the block producer (Leader).” For Jito to offer reliable bundling services, it must cover as many Leader Slots as possible. This requires extremely high client adoption across the network so that most rounds are led by Jito nodes.
Once a tipping point is reached, network effects self-reinforce: wider adoption leads to more stable service, making it harder for competitors to challenge. This explains how Jito rapidly consolidated 94% client share.
MEV on Solana is a capital game
Solana is a PoS chain—more stake means higher probability of becoming a leader. Leaders control block ordering, thus capturing the most MEV and tips. This creates significant capital barriers:
* Large nodes stake more, produce blocks more frequently, and synchronize information faster;
* Faster information enables stronger arbitrage capabilities;
* RPC services from large nodes (even co-located services) rise in price, becoming scarce gateways to information.
Only those with access to well-capitalized major nodes can realistically earn MEV.
4. Where Does MEV Revenue Flow on Solana? Who Is Making the Money?
As previously noted, MEV revenue on Solana is substantial. So who ultimately captures these profits? Three main beneficiaries: the Jito protocol itself, large high-stake validators, and block space brokers.
Jito Protocol: The Infrastructure Tax Collector
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Over the past year, Jito processed over 4.3 billion bundles, generating total user-paid tips of 5.51 million SOL. At a SOL price of $140, this represents approximately $770 million in additional on-chain transaction value routed through Jito infrastructure. Jito takes a 3–5% platform fee from validators, meaning Jito’s own revenue over the past year was around 200,000–270,000 SOL (~$35 million).
High-Stake Nodes: The On-Chain Privileged Class
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As a PoS chain, nodes with higher stakes have greater chances of producing blocks. These “top-tier validators” not only earn base block rewards and inflationary yields but also collect substantial tips from Jito Bundles. While normal node returns are around 6%, during periods of high network activity, some nodes achieve annualized returns of over 20%, far exceeding typical nodes. Their income sources include inflation rewards, block rewards, Jito tips, and revenue from selling SWQoS transaction inclusion rights.
Block Space Brokers: The Gatekeepers of Transaction Inclusion
These brokers act as secondary sellers of block space. Their operation works as follows:
* They partner with high-stake nodes to purchase SWQoS transaction inclusion rights at discounted rates; (Stake-Weighted Quality of Service, or SWQoS, allows leaders to identify and prioritize transactions from staked validators. During congestion, SWQoS ensures high-stake validators’ transactions are less likely to be delayed or dropped)
* They aggregate multiple users’ transactions into Jito Bundles, increasing collective tips for higher priority;
* Users pay significantly higher tips than what brokers pay validators, allowing brokers to pocket the spread;
* Additionally, they embed their own arbitrage trades (e.g., backruns) within bundles to extract additional MEV profits.
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For example, DefiLlama shows partial revenue data for bloXroute (link), indicating substantial tip income. However, note that this data doesn’t cover all receiving addresses nor exclude distributions to validators and order flow providers.
Overall, Solana exhibits extreme centralization of power, with the vast majority of Jito’s MEV revenue captured by the Jito protocol, large validator nodes, and block space brokers.
5. Client Competition Landscape on Solana
Currently, Solana has over 1,300 validator nodes, with over 94% running the Jito client. The main client types include:
Solana Node
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This is the basic node client without any MEV optimization. Nodes running this client are largely marginalized due to significantly lower earnings compared to Jito nodes.
Jito Node
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The Jito client builds upon the official client by adding Jito protocol and Bundles support, enabling nodes to accept bundled transactions and collect tips. Users seeking frontrunning, anti-sandwiching, or fast inclusion can submit transactions via Jito Bundles with tips for priority. Because Jito nodes earn extra tip revenue, over 90% of mainnet nodes have switched to Jito, making it the default choice.
Paladin Node
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Paladin is a modified version based on the Jito client, aiming to provide a fairer transaction priority mechanism, primarily addressing sandwich attacks within Jito’s bundle ordering (where malicious validators insert sandwich trades without penalty). According to community reports, Paladin currently has about 15% adoption and, since it’s still recognized as a Jito client by the network, is included within the 94% total.
Firedancer Node
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Developed by Jump Crypto, Firedancer is an independently implemented high-performance Solana client designed to improve network throughput for quantitative trading. Initially, it didn’t support the Jito protocol and thus couldn’t earn tip revenue, resulting in minimal mainnet adoption. However, newer versions now support Jito, allowing Firedancer validators to earn Jito tips. Although mainnet deployment remains low, most testnet nodes now run Firedancer, suggesting future growth potential. The Solana Foundation also supports it.
Client competition dynamics:
Jito vs. Paladin: The Fairness Debate
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Jito’s high concentration has led to de facto MEV extraction monopoly. However, the protocol currently lacks penalties for malicious behavior (e.g., validator sandwich attacks), meaning even bundle users may still get sandwiched. This opens opportunities for clients like Paladin, which offers a fairer bidding process for transaction priority. But since Paladin is built on Jito-Solana, if Jito improves its mechanisms, it could squeeze Paladin’s survival space.
Firedancer vs. Other Clients: Performance-Based Evolution
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Firedancer’s biggest advantage is performance, claiming theoretical TPS of up to 1 million (actual performance unknown). If Solana’s transaction volume continues growing, high-performance clients will gain an edge, squeezing out slower ones. Once high-performance nodes start packing larger blocks, lower-performance clients may fall behind in synchronization, hurting validation performance and eventually becoming obsolete. Thus, as demand for Solana’s TPS increases, the network will naturally migrate toward high-performance clients.
In summary: the vast majority of Solana mainnet nodes run the Jito-Solana client, making the Jito protocol part of the foundational infrastructure. With Firedancer now compatible with Jito, the future may see a performance-driven upgrade cycle—from “running Jito earns more” to “only running high-performance Jito avoids obsolescence.”
6. How Large Institutions Gradually Become Power Players on Solana
Solana’s architecture inherently favors centralization of power, creating fertile ground for large institutions to enter and dominate the ecosystem. Entities like Solana Foundation, Jito, Multicoin, Jump, Helius, Coinbase, Binance, Jupiter hold significant governance influence on Solana. Many institutions see Solana’s future potential and aim to become key players in its economic landscape. Take the recently active Sol Strategies as a clear example of how large institutions systematically penetrate and establish control over Solana:
Step One: Acquiring validator nodes to expand market share and ecosystem dominance, positioning itself as a major player.
Solana currently has a staking rate of 65.6% (about 380 million SOL staked). Controlling validator nodes means holding consensus power and voting rights. Sol Strategies acquired top-tier nodes en masse to quickly enter the core of power:
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Nov 2024: Acquired Cogent Crypto, a validator operator across Solana, Sui, Monad, and ARCH networks, for $18 million (cash + stock), with a primary focus on the SOL network.
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Mar 2025: Acquired top Solana validators Laine and Stakewiz.com for 35 million CAD (cash + equity), increasing its staked SOL to 3.3 million tokens (worth ~$388 million), and brought in Laine founder Michael Hubbard as Chief Strategy Officer.
Step Two: Attempting to push SIMD-228 proposal to adjust inflation rate, further consolidating power (proposal ultimately failed).
Sol Strategies championed the SIMD-228 proposal to replace the current fixed deflation model with a dynamic inflation mechanism. Had it passed, Solana’s annual inflation rate would have dropped from 4.68% to as low as 1% or even 0%. Though the proposal was rejected, its strategic intent was clear:
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Stabilize SOL value: Lower inflation reduces new SOL issuance, alleviates token selling pressure, and enhances long-term staker returns;
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Suppress small nodes, strengthen dominance of large nodes: Reduced inflation shrinks rewards for all validators, but smaller nodes have weaker risk resilience and are more likely to exit, accelerating centralization toward top validators.
Step Three: Playing the role of financial orchestrator on Solana—pushing for Solana ETF listing, institutionalizing crypto assets, acting as ETF staking provider.
Sol Strategies became a staking provider for the 3iQ Solana Staking ETF and is advancing its listing, aiming to further grow its staking volume and compete for blockchain governance leadership.
Summary
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MEV is a big business—especially on Solana, where MEV is particularly intense and highly profitable.
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Jito-like MEV protocols are monopolistic, exhibiting strong winner-takes-all dynamics.
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Power on Solana is highly centralized, with MEV profits primarily captured by the Jito protocol, high-stake nodes, and block space brokers.
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Multiple clients exist on Solana today, with Jito-Solana currently dominating the mainnet, while Firedancer clients supporting Jito may emerge as the next-generation high-performance alternative.
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Solana is ideally suited for institutional dominance. Sol Strategies demonstrates how an institution can comprehensively infiltrate Solana—from technology and governance to financial systems—through node acquisitions, governance proposals, and pushing ETF listings, all aimed at seizing blockchain governance sovereignty.
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